Regulations may in some cases prohibit an excessive number of antennas visible on a roof. Additionally, it is desirable to reduce the bulk of the combined radio antenna installation, to make the antenna more unobtrusive. However, it is difficult to provide a low-profile antenna installation, particularly when each of a plurality of antennas is being used for a different purpose and/or may be required to point in a particular direction, which may be different than the directionality required for any other antenna, such as when providing a point-to-point or mesh network in which antennas are pointed directly at each other. This need will be particularly acute for dense small cell deployments in urban or rural environments, which may be required to blend into the urban landscape.
Currently, when multiple antennas are used, they are all mounted to a single mounting pole and pointed in different directions, which does not solve the problem described above.
One potential solution would be to cover several antennas with a single radome, thereby causing multiple antennas to visually appear as a single antenna. However, it is difficult to cover several antennas with a single radome (a radio-transparent shroud) that is reasonably compact while still providing the configurability needed for several antennas. For example, if two antennas are to be mounted to a mounting pole while facing in different directions, and the radome must be large enough to cover both antennas, the radius of the radome ends up being at least as great as the size of the larger antenna.